Amanda Armstrong

Choosing apps that are appropriate for your child and your family can be overwhelming. Online ads and app stores hype featured apps, show customer ratings, and list “The Best” or “The Top” apps. While these sources of information can be useful, you still may feel uncertain of which apps to choose.

Before you start scanning through lists and reviews, it may be helpful to establish what you’re looking for in apps. Then you can use this knowledge to guide your app choices.

Questions to Ask

Here are some questions that may be helpful for you to address when choosing an app for your child.

What are my family’s interests? Identify your hobbies, those that have been passed down through generations, or those of your child. Starting with existing hobbies and interests of your family will help create meaningful and engaging opportunities when using an app. Some organizations produce or recommend apps related to their interests like the Audubon Society or NASA.

What features are important to our family? Consider your family’s values and how that can be supported in an app. Maybe you want diverse representation of characters (i.e., race, gender, diverse abilities, etc.), multiple language options, or depictions of specific types of environments (i.e., plains, urban centers, deserts, forests, etc.). Reviewing an apps’ screenshots can help you determine if these components are included (though may not always be the case).

Is this app easy to use and appealing to my child? Whether you choose to use the app with your child or not, it’s important that you both know what to do once you open the app. An app that is easy to use and navigate will help create an engaging and enjoyable experience for everyone. When looking for ease of use, you may ask:

Can your child easily move the objects on the screen?

Are the icons clear for your child to find?

Does your child know what the icons do (i.e., which icons take them back to the home screen, which icons open a game or feature within the app)?

Are there items on the screen that distract them, like ads?

Do I want creative opportunities for my child? Do I want an app with a fixed path or outcome? Or both? Apps may have preset content designed by developers; creative features built in the app for children to draw, write, and add pictures; or a mixture of both. Having a blend of these types of apps can help make for richer app experiences for your child. Your child learns and explores content related to a particular subject and also creates content that is meaningful to them.

Will I pay for the app? There are lots of free apps, but the reasons for the free offer may vary. For instance, “lite” versions of apps often have limited features. Some free apps have upgrades or ads embedded, which can accumulate costs over time. Determining the reason the app is free can help you decide whether the app can be used for the long-term or if you’ll have to continually monitor the app’s use.

Choose a Variety of Apps

No single app will meet every need. It can be helpful to have an assortment of quality, age-appropriate apps from which your child can choose. For instance, if your child enjoys pretending and dramatic play, you may select Toca Life: City or Town ($3.99). These apps have a variety of places, characters, and situations that players can use to expand their imagination. Creating stop-motion animations can be engaging to include multiple members of the family. Choosing apps like Easy Stop Motion Studio ($3.99) or iMotion (free) are easy-to-navigate tools that can work well for both beginners or experienced stop-motion filmmakers. If you want to combine coding and creativity, ScratchJr (free) may be an option. Players can design their own characters and backgrounds or choose from the predesigned content within the app. Using coding blocks, players can animate actions within each of the scenes. While some of these apps are free, for those that are not, the upfront cost omits advertisements and hidden costs that can accumulate over time.

Addressing these guiding questions and providing a variety of choices for your child will help you make smart and intentional choices about the apps your child uses for play and learning. You may find you and your child returning to the apps multiple times because they have chosen apps that resonate with your family and build meaningful experiences.

Amanda Armstrong is a Ph.D. Candidate in curriculum and instruction at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Her dissertation research examines the racial and gender representation of characters within preschool apps and what children notice in apps that vary in character representation. She currently works at NMSU’s Learning Games Lab, where she leads user-testing sessions, teaches summer sessions with young people on game design, and works on a few design teams on current projects in development. In addition to her own research and work as the Games Lab Coordinator, Amanda is a contributing writer for Edutopia, a founding member of KidMap, and an active member of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Before coming to NMSU, Amanda conducted research with Erikson’s Early Math Collaborative and was the program coordinator at the Technology in Early Childhood (TEC) Center at Erikson Institute.